1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to biologically motivated visual flight control systems and more particularly to a flight control system including a biomimetic mode for attitude control by balancing the sideways optical flow.
2. Description of the Related Art
Flying insects such as houseflies have sensory-motor abilities that still outperform those of unmanned air vehicles (UAV's). There is currently no obvious solution to the problem of deciding the type of sensor system to equip a small UAV capable of flying in narrow and complex environments which may include, for example, trees, buildings, corridors and caves.
The paper entitled “Behavior-Oriented Vision for Biomimetic Flight Control”, Titus R. Neumann, Heinrich H. Buithoff, Proceedings of the EPSRC/BBSRC International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Robotics—The Legacy of W. Grey Walter, 14–16 Aug. 2002, HP Labs Bristol, UK, pp. 196–203 (2002) discusses tuning the depicted receptive field to detect differences of translatory optic flow in the left and right frontolateral regions of the visual field. The sign of the output signal indicates whether the relative object nearness is larger on the left or on the right side of the agent. Thus, it can be used to avoid potential obstacles by turning toward the direction of minimal image motion.
The paper entitled “A Biomimetic Reactive Navigation System Using the Optical Flow for a Rotary-Wing UAV in Urban Environment”, Laurent Muratet, Stephane Doncieux, Jean-Arcady Meyer, AnimatLab, LIP 6, University of Paris 6—CNRS, France, discusses the use of balance strategy that equalizes the perceived pixel velocities to tend to maintain equal distances to obstacles on both sides of a helicopter. The authors utilized control laws that served to balance the optical flow.
As will be disclosed below, the present invention provides a system for utilizing a single sensor for implementing efficient reconnaissance and biomimetic flight and therefore enabling miniaturization of the flight vehicle. This may be particularly useful for various future defense force needs which may involve, for example, the combination of unmanned aerial vehicles and piloted rotorcraft. As discussed in the article entitled “Unmanned Aircraft Adapting to Army Future Force Needs”, National Defense, December 2003, traditionally, UAV's have been controlled by a ground station, but may be very useful in being flown along with a helicopter to be the eyes, ears and sensors forward for the manned system.